Mirrormask (Film)

'Mirrormask', from the creative minds of Neil Gaiman and Dave McKean, is a film that uses a lot of CG, green-screen and compositing to create a visually impacting dream-world. The freedom of the 'dream' format allows McKean's illustrations to be directly translated onto the screen, giving bold imagery, a style that works in favour of the films low budget as only 15 animators (freshly graduated from art schools) worked on the production. The film's slightly flat and make-shift appearance avoids too much 'realism' (which ultimately would be time-consuming and expensive to produce) and adds a lot of character and atmosphere to the film.



This is of interest to me as I'm aware attempting to be too 'realistic' in this project would probably work against me, so by taking into account the overall style of my 'short-film' (especially my end green-screened shot) and possibly stylising it in some way as to make both characters (an abductee and an alien) visually  belong in the shot I would hopefully have a visually interesting outcome that doesn't look too jarring or tacky.

I really like the masks and costume design in this film. It compliments the CG well as it distorts the human face slightly, highlighting different areas for expression. For example in the case of the Character Valentine the eye is drawn to his mouth, as the rest of his features are covered, and he expresses himself through large movements.

There's an obvious difference between the CG characters in this film and actors in costume. Personally, I prefer the latter as I feel they seem more substantial and solid. Because of this I'm leaning towards using an 'actor' (or more likely a volunteer) to be my alien for my project as apposed to creating it in Maya, though I am aware this may limit my design.

Maya and After Effects were both used for this film with McKean compositing it himself as well as creating the texture maps, a choice which ultimately controls a lot of the aesthetic of the film. Visually the film stands out as quite unique, and I find it impressive it was done on such a low budget. Interestingly McKean allowed the animators to work on their own individual scenes, meaning once they watched the film they could easily point out which work was theres, instead of just being a cog in the machine. This is quite refreshing to see though, and a good influence and inspiration for my own work in this project.